Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Soon
. . . I’ll have my chestnuts out of the fire.
From cannelle-vanille’s photostream.
Karen loves her chestnuts.
1. Preheat oven to 375F.
2. Score the hull (husk? whatever) by making an X with a sharp knife. I make each line segment about 1 to 1.5 cm long.
3. Put the chestnuts into a roasting pan of some sort, then lay it on the bottom rack of the preheated oven.
4. Roast for 25 minutes.
5. Peel (gingerly!) and eat.
What’s your technique?
D.
Go to NYC and buy from vendor outside RCMH.
That is my technique.
1)Score flat side with X.
2) Soal in warm water for 5 minutes. (makes them easier to peel.)
3) place cut side up on plate.
4) microwave for approx 1 min for 4.
5) Eat!!
1. Create bonfire.
2. Get a ton of chestnuts.
3. Dump said ton of chestnuts into bonfire.
4. Wait 25 minutes.
5. Take out the burnt remains of the chestnuts with tongs.
6. Throw them all out because not only are they burnt to a crisp, I also don’t like chestnuts in the first place.
I buy mine from a street vendor in Edinburgh where they give a huge serving in yesterday’s newspaper. It’s a Christmas time favourite that sadly disappears after New Year.
1. Wait until it’s really cold outside.
2. Go to a really crowded place.
3. Try to ignore clamouring of children to buy chestnuts.
4. Try some more. Wow, the Christmas lights are really nice. Very pretty.
5. Give in, buy bag of roasted chestnuts from vendor.
6. Goggle at price of something that falls onto the street by the millions all over the fargin’ city.
7. Bite back curses as goddam hot nuts burn fingers. Who the fuck serves roasted nuts at a temperature sufficient to weld iron?
8. Try to ignore clamouring of children as you throw bag of hot nuts from hand to hand, making that ‘hot-hot-hot’ noise.
9. Once nuts have stopped glowing red hot, give each child one nut. Actually, only one child, because the other one is too small yet.
10. Take a nut. Eat. Sweet. Mealy. Not much flavour otherwise.
11. After 2 hours of carrying bag and offering more nuts to child, throw away bag of cold nuts (- 3 nuts – one for you, one for child, one for spouse, who also refuses to eat more. Not that you can blame her, as you stop at 1 too).
12. Throw away 1/2 nut child has been carrying for the last two hours.
13. Try not to calculate net cost of food consumed because it’s something over $2 per nut.
That’s how *I* prepare and eat goddam roasted chestnuts.
Wow, such mixed feelings over nuts!
I’ll have to try that soaking trick.
i have cheastnut trees but my son and i use them in our sling shots
I have never, not once, had roasted chestnuts.
Williams-Sonoma used to sell a special knife for scoring chestnut hulls and one is supposed to use a chestnut roasting pan (perforated at the bottom for more even roasting with a long insulated handle, so you can use it over a fire and still shake the chestnuts). Maybe items to add to your holiday wish list?
I go to Uwajimaya and buy them from the cart outside… She’s there pretty much year-round. Heinlein’s rant aside, I’m all in favor of specialization.
My method:
1. Go to NYC
2. Order hot chestnuts from a street vendor
3. Complain about how they taste like sterno and not nearly as good as when I was a girl.
Hah. I think you’re lying. We have four chestnut trees. FOUR. That’s a hell of a lot of leaves to rake, in other words. And a hell of a lot of chestnuts.
So, never having eaten chestnuts before, I collected a bunch and tried this–pretty much exactly as you’ve written it. They were horrible. Bitter and astringent.
Maybe it’s a different kind of chestnut? Because if it isn’t, and if I can just do something different, thereby rendering them edible, roasting them would be a lot more fun than shoveling them into giant paper bags for composting.
Public Service Announcement: most North American chestnut trees aren’t really chestnuts, they’re buckeyes (or horsechestnuts) and they’re poisonous. I tried posting links to Wikipedia for both, but Doug’s spam filter ate my comment, so you’ll have to look it up yourself. If they’re bitter, they’re the ones you don’t want to eat.